


causing a scene

by easternepiphany



Category: Community
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-21
Updated: 2012-06-21
Packaged: 2017-11-08 06:11:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,667
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/440025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/easternepiphany/pseuds/easternepiphany
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five times Jeff and Britta have sex during their junior year at Greendale.</p>
            </blockquote>





	causing a scene

**Author's Note:**

> Follows production order of Urban Matrimony/Contemporary Impressionists. So, Contemporary Impressionists happened first.

_one_

This is going to be the year of Britta Perry, she tells herself. Her new textbooks (every required one!) are spread out over the kitchen table. She has notebooks and pens and highlighters. She asked Annie for advice on picking out a new backpack. (She bought a planner but it's still sitting in the shopping bag in the corner of her living room. Rome wasn't built in a day and all that.) She's all ready to go and there's still like, thirty-six hours before the first day of school.

"New year, new Britta!" she says aloud, mostly to her cat, who is watching her from the floor with one suspicious eye.

She's tired of being a screw-up, being the butt of everyone's jokes, being thirty years old and bumbling around like a teenager. It's time to get serious, and while she's not naïve enough to think that this feeling is going to last beyond the first two weeks of school, it's a good feeling, and so she stops her organizing for a minute to absorb it and revel in it.

And then her phone buzzes.

_Tomorrow's the last day of summer_ , the screen says.

_Thanks, Captain Obvious. Too bad you were a lawyer and not a detective with those skills._

_Wanna go get drunk?_

She purses her lips together and pauses, her fingers hovering over the keys. If there's anything that constantly keeps her from feeling like she's moving forward, it's Jeff Winger. She's only seen him twice this summer: once at Ben's christening and another time when the group—minus Pierce—had lunch together. And maybe she was getting her period or maybe it was just too hot outside, but when Shirley had thrust Ben into Jeff's arms and he stood there awkwardly for a minute before making a stupid baby face and smiling like no one could see, something jumped in Britta's uterus and she downed a can of beer in one gulp.

_I'm taking your non-response as a yes. I'll pick you up in ten._

Her first instinct is to argue but the truth is, she misses Jeff and hanging out with him and getting drunk with him. They spent almost an entire year together and then just stopped cold turkey and suddenly on the weekends she isn't eating pizza on his couch or showering in his bathroom or cooking him breakfast anymore. Sometimes she still wakes up on Sunday mornings and feels weird, like she forgot to do something and the other side of the bed is empty and everything is incredibly lonely for a few minutes.

So she types out an _okay_ and pushes her textbooks to the side and changes her clothes. As promised, he's knocking on her door in ten minutes flat, because Jeff Winger is nothing if not annoyingly punctual all the time. It's almost ninety degrees outside and he's wearing pants and a button-down shirt like it was October.

"What do you say," he starts in lieu of a greeting, "we take a cab to that place in Riverside Falls with the patio? Summer drinking, am I right?"

She narrows her eyes. "You're being weird. But okay. You're paying for the cab, though."

They went there last year during spring break, too old and too poor for actual college spring break locales. Britta had dreamt of lying on a beach in Mexico but drank too many margaritas in Colorado and threw up in Jeff's bathroom instead.

The cab ride is long; it's almost half an hour from Britta's apartment, but she suspects that, for whatever reason, Jeff isn't in the mood to see anyone he might know tonight. That's also probably the reason no one else from the study group was invited. And when they get to the bar and he orders martinis instead of scotch, even though vodka gets him drunker quicker, she knows something is wrong.

"I went to Shirley's last week," she says, wondering if she can get him to say what's going on. "She asked about you. And went on a little about how you've been pretty distant all summer."

He tosses an olive in her direction. "I haven't been distant. Everyone does their own thing over the summer, we all know this."

This is the part about Jeff Winger she doesn't like, the part that tries to pretend he doesn't care when it's so glaringly obvious that he does. He's not the same jerk he was when she met him two years ago and she wishes that jerk would stop randomly emerging from time to time. So she downs the rest of her martini and waves the waitress over to order another one.

"Drinking game," she says. "Every time someone from that group of bros over there"—she points to a table of frat boys on the other side of the patio—"pees in that bush over there, you have to finish your drink in one gulp, no matter how much you have."

He smirks at her across the table and leans in a little. "You're on, Perry."

An hour later, when they're drunk enough to slur their words, they stumble into a cab and make out in the backseat. Somewhere, beneath the alcohol, sober Britta exists and knows she shouldn't be doing this. But Jeff's hand slides up the side of her shirt and his fingers are against her skin and her resolve has never been that good.

"The study group is full of feelings," he gasps between kisses. "Monday morning is going to start nine months of drama and craziness. I just need to not deal with that for a while, you know. I need to not feel."

Britta wants to point out that he's been doing quite a lot of feeling of her boobs, but she keeps kissing him instead. Arguing never gets them anywhere.

The cab driver bangs on the glass when he pulls up in front of Britta's apartment. Jeff and Britta break apart and he throws some bills at the driver before they steady themselves to her front door. Jeff's drunker than she is and he leans against her, almost knocking her down. His hands wander as she sifts through her purse for her keys and by the time she's unlocking the door, his mouth is on her neck.

As soon as the door closes behind them, he pulls her into the bedroom. Her head is still swimming but somehow she still feels in control. She's been in this position so many times, has told herself over and over again that sleeping with Jeff Winger is bad for her, but it keeps coming back to this: to her shirt being pulled over her head, to tugging his jeans down his hips, to making fun of each other's underwear.

Their movements are quick and sloppy and when he's inside her he slurs into her ear, "Good god, I missed this. I just want this, want you right now."

She doesn't know what to say because Jeff always says he hates feelings but he has more of them than anyone she knows and she doesn't know how to deal with them. So she kisses him to shut him up and when he falls asleep before her, he holds her too tight, like he usually does, like she's going to disappear in the middle of the night.

As she falls asleep, still a little drunk, she thinks to herself that it's only fitting that the Year of Britta Perry starts off with her getting laid. By Jeff Winger.

* * *

_two_

Halloween ends with a post-dance-pajama-party-scary-movie-marathon at Troy and Abed's. Jeff still comes in costume, of course, saying that he doesn't own any pajamas (Britta knows this is a lie; it's just that his pajamas don't make him look accidentally handsome, but more like Tom Hanks in _Big_ ). Shirley comes by halfway through, Andre and the boys in tow, after taking them trick-or-treating, and Annie makes a big show of dropping candy into their pumpkins.

Britta still feels kind of stupid after the events of the study group pre-party, especially sitting on Troy and Abed's living room floor in her pajamas, which are not cute and matching like Annie's and might have a hole in them somewhere. While the group is preoccupied with helping Elijah and Jordan inventory their candy and cooing over Ben's costume (he's dressed as a cow and it is, Britta has to admit, bloodcurdlingly adorable), Britta slips down the hall and into the bathroom. She pulls herself up to sit on the counter and flips through her phone for something to do, wondering how much time she can kill before Abed comes looking for her to make sure she isn't getting high in his bathroom again.

That was one time, okay?

Just as she expects, there's a knock on the door. But it's Jeff, not Abed, who slips inside and shuts the door behind him before she even gets a chance to say anything.

"What if I had been peeing?" she asks.

Jeff shrugs. "I've seen you pee before. Why is there a bowl of candy corn on the back of the toilet?"

"I think that's how Troy and Abed prepare for guests," she laughs. "Or they just get hungry."

He leans against the counter next to her, his legs bent awkwardly to avoid hitting the bathtub. The room is much too small for him and it makes him seem even taller, somehow massive. It's a little claustrophobic but somehow also a little comforting.

"Why are you hiding in the bathroom?"

"Because I'm thirty-one years old and at a Halloween pajama party."

"Good point."

It's silent for a moment and then he asks, "Do you remember last Halloween?"

"Not really. Which is probably a good thing. I don't want to know what happened that night."

"We had sex in the bathroom, I remember that much."

She turns to face him and raises and eyebrow. "And?"

" _And_ what do you say we make that a yearly tradition?"

She thinks of all the ways that this is a bad idea. Having sex in a friend's bathroom probably violates like a hundred friendship laws. Having sex in a friend's bathroom while there are _children_ in the next room probably violates a thousand good person laws.

But having sex with _Jeff_ in a bathroom? The thought makes her feel powerful, in control. Like she's someone whose name isn't used as a verb meaning _to make a small mistake_ or someone who doesn't forget to look to see which way the arrow is pointing.

So she glances quickly to his lips and he pushes himself off the counter to stand in front of her, his body between her legs. He leans down to kiss her and they're off. Britta's good at this, having sex with Jeff. It's familiar and it's comfortable, even if they're rushing and the bathroom counter isn't very big and at one point her shirt gets stuck halfway off her head. She prays that no one comes in; the last thing she needs is for someone, anyone, to see her and Jeff fucking in a bathroom, her pajama pants dangling off one ankle, Jeff's jeans down somewhere at his knees.

She bites his shoulder to muffle herself as she comes. He's still wearing that ridiculous jacket and she gets a mouthful of leather. He slumps against her for a moment, his hands still in her hair, and she can hear Shirley's laugh a million miles away. It breaks the moment and he kisses her one more time before pulling up his pants and straightening his shirt and jacket.

"I'll go first. Wait a few minutes, okay?" He smiles, a genuine _hey are we good?_ smile, and she returns it, nodding.

He shuts the door quietly behind him and she hops off the counter and gets dressed. There are some Clorox wipes under the sink, so she does her good-person duty of wiping down the counter. She fixes her pajamas, readjusts her hair, and flushes the toilet for good measure before leaving, feeling less like a loser in her thirties and more like the person she used to be.

* * *

_three_

Britta wakes up the morning after Shirley's wedding with a champagne hangover. Her eyes haven't opened yet and she is already fighting her body to go back to sleep. But her head is throbbing, pounding in a way it hasn't in a long time. It had, after all, been quite a while since she'd last gotten completely smashed off of champagne. It reminded her of sophomore year of high school, stealing bottles of Bollinger out of her mother's refrigerator to pass around with her friends, the only liquor they could score at fifteen years old.

After a minute she gives up trying to sleep and slowly cracks one eye open. Her bedroom is brighter than usual, and after she opens the other eye she realizes that's because she's not in her bedroom.

Oh. Right.

She looks to her right and sees Jeff's sleeping form next to her, curled around where her body probably was at some point during the night, a crease in his brow.

She purses her lips and runs her finger over the crease, barely touching the skin. His nose twitches slightly, but he doesn't move otherwise. He looks fragile when he sleeps, she thinks, not at all like the pompous blowhard he acts like the majority of the time. He kind of freaked her out last night, now that she's sober enough to really think about it.

Carefully, she slides out of his unnecessarily huge bed and searches around for her underwear. She knows there's still an oversized t-shirt of hers somewhere in the bottom drawer of his dresser—if he hasn't gotten rid of it. But it's nestled between two pairs of running shorts and she can't help but smile as she slips it on.

She knows where he keeps his coffee—the good kind, not the stale stuff she buys when her bank account dips dangerously low—and as she waits for it to brew, she entertains herself by snooping through the kitchen cupboards. Last year, she added items to his weekly grocery list, moved his cereal from the cupboard by the fridge to the cupboard next to the dishwasher, rearranged his silverware drawer. There's still a box of the tea she likes stuffed behind some granola bars.

She pours two mugs of coffee and adds the appropriate amount of milk and sugar to each (for someone who counts every single solitary calorie he puts in his mouth, Jeff takes an outrageous amount of sugar in his coffee) and carries them back to the bedroom. Jeff is sitting up and rubbing his eyes. He accepts his mug from her with a sheepish smile and a wince. "Thanks," he says, his voice deep and gravelly.

She can't think of anything to say and her head hurts too much to try, so she climbs back into bed and props the pillow up behind her. Coffee always seems to taste better coming from his coffee maker than hers (probably because his cost like, $300, and hers was a $10 special at Target) so she's content to let the caffeine attack her hangover in silence.

"Troy and Abed were creeping me out last night," he says after a few minutes.

It's hard not to laugh at him because _really_? They both had weird mental breakdowns and almost got married _again_ and then they had sex _again_ and she woke up in his bed _again_ and she made them coffee while wearing her own t-shirt that was in his drawer. Part of her can't really blame him because he's been so down lately and it's easy to talk about Troy and Abed. It's _safe_.

So she lets out a small _hmmm_ and takes a giant gulp of coffee. Against her better judgment she turns toward him and says, "Are you okay?"

"A little hungover, but I've had worse."

" _Jeff_ ," she says. "I got an A on my psych final last semester. And last night you practically started crying in front of everyone at Shirley's wedding. And last week, you took too many anti-anxiety pills and freaked out at a bar mitzvah. You don't see anything wrong with that?"

He sets his coffee on the nightstand and rolls his eyes. "Look, Doctor 101, you and I both got drunk and made fools out of ourselves last night. It's not the first time that's happened and it probably won't be the last."

She thinks of the way his face looked last night, clean-shaven and contorted with anger and frustration, and for the first time she can clearly picture a ten year-old Jeffrey Winger, his hands clamped over his ears and his eyes screwed shut as he tries to block out the sound of his dad yelling. It breaks her heart a little because, sure, he's a giant douche most of the time and he thinks he can save the world by talking a lot and he makes fun of her cats, but he's also kind of maybe her best friend and so she feels like it's her job to protect him.

"You kind of scared me last night, Jeff."

He narrows his eyes at her. "Yeah, well, you scared me, too, is that what you want to hear? Maybe someone has some mommy issues they're repressing. You were willing to throw away thirty years of your ridiculous values to become Susie Homemaker."

Her jaw drops before she can stop it and she's speechless—a state of being in which she rarely finds herself while in his company. "Wha—"

"Oh, come on, Britta. You honestly believe the shit you were spewing out last night?"

"This isn't about me," she says. "What do you even care if I do believe it, anyway?"

"Because," he says tightly, then sighs. " _Because_ you're Britta Perry and since the day we met you have been so adamant about who you are. Don't throw it away just because you're good at planning parties.

It's the nicest compliment she's ever received and something she both would and wouldn't ever expected Jeff Winger to say. She thinks he can sense it because he looks embarrassed and so much younger, his expression earnest and his hair crumpled into actual bedhead.

Every once in a while, there's a weird moment between the two of them, where genuine emotion has the potential to erupt. If she honest with herself, these moments scare the shit out of her. Any combination of _Jeff_ and _emotion_ tends to terrify her to the point where she wants to bolt and never look back. Because even after three years, she still hasn't been able to figure out this tangled mess of feelings she has for him. This is the third time they've slept together since they've agreed to stop and sure, they were drunk two of those times, but she doesn't know what to make of it. She wants to tell him this, she really does, but instead she says, "My mother sent me to charm school when I was twelve."

He raises his eyebrows and the right corner of his mouth pulls up into a smirk and with that beat, things fall back onto the normal side of the spectrum, and Britta can let out a breath.

"She caught me playing with my brothers in the mud and for two weeks I had to walk around with a book on my head and drink a million cups of tea out of teeny little cups and do you know they actually taught us to curtsy? This was like, 1992, not 1540." She lets out a dry laugh and averts her eyes. "I got kicked out before graduation though because I ripped out pages of _The Feminine Mystique_ and threw them at my classmates and shouted at them to read it and stop being brainwashed by the patriarchy."

Instead of laughing at her like she expects him to do, he nudges her shoulder with his. "See? That's what I'm talking about."

This praise makes her uncomfortable so she just nods and takes a gulp of her coffee. She can deal with a Jeff who wants to bicker, or one that wants to have sex in a bathroom, or one who wants to be her Greendale co-parent. But she can't deal with one who says nice things to her because then she finds it hard to not think about the fact that he really is a good person and she actually really likes him a lot and they have this weird complicated history. When he's like this, she can't help but think about the fact that, time after time, she keeps ending up in his bed and she feels more at home in his apartment than she does in her own.

"I should probably get going," she says, turning and putting her feet on the floor. She adjusts her shirt so he doesn't see her underwear. She is suddenly more self-conscious than she's been in a very long time. Jeff follows her out of the bedroom, stumbling into a pair of boxers.

"How many times are you going to do this, Britta?"

She's all the way to the front door when she realizes she isn't wearing pants or shoes. "Do what?" she asks.

"I thought we were past all this bullshit. You feel bad about yourself, I try to make you feel better. That's how friendship works, Britta. You know, for all the shit you say about me not knowing how to care for other people, you should probably go look at yourself. I'm not the one running away without any damn pants on."

She doesn't say anything, but bites her lip and looks at her bare feet. She _hates_ it when Jeff is right, hates it more than anything else in the world. She wonders then if she should just let it go, look up, smile, say he's right, and then ask him to make her breakfast. (She still dreams at night, sometimes, about the waffles he makes from scratch, loaded with syrup and fresh fruit and thick enough to soak up any hangover.)

"You can run all you want, Britta, but it's not going to change the fact that you're scared you're going to end up like your mother. And you're not. You think we all end up like our parents? If that were the case I would be—"

His voice trails off and Britta knows she's let this go on too long. She takes a step forward and wraps her arms around his middle. She can count the number of times she's hugged him on one hand, a surprisingly low number for someone she's known and slept with for three years. He's still for a moment and she says, "You're not like him, either. This is a two-way street, Winger. You're like, more than halfway to becoming an actual person and not a smug, arrogant douche."

With that, his arms come around her and they stand there for a moment before he whispers to her, "Jeff Winger waffles? I have mango in the fridge."

* * *

_four_

They have sex in a pillow fort.

They've sent Troy and Abed home to sleep; exhaustion has set in and both of them are fighting to keep their eyes open. Shirley drives them home and the heads to her own house, anxious to see her boys after so long apart. Jeff, Britta, Annie, and Pierce volunteer to help take down the forts.

But they've all been awake for two days and it's not long before Pierce and then Annie fall asleep in the study room, each on their own couch. Jeff and Britta decide to let them sleep and walk through the library, collecting blankets and pillows into a large pile. She's seen Greendale destroyed many times before, but it still throws her off a little bit, especially since this time Troy and Abed are directly responsible.

"Today was weird," Jeff says, scrubbing a hand over his face. "I think I started a diary."

Britta laughs. "Oh, please. You loved it. You got to make a million important speeches, not go to class for two days, and you got to play nurse with Annie." There's no bitterness in her voice when she says the last part, although she feels it a little bit. She's never gotten totally over her jealousy of Annie, who is always put together and sweet and liked by everyone.

He shoots her a look and picks up another blanket. "Whatever, Robert Mapplethorpe. Last time I checked, you were the one who nurses men back to health and then sleeps with them."

"One time!" Britta protests. She throws a pillow at him and he groans.

"No more," he says. "I never want to see another pillow fight as long as I live."

They reach the end of the library and have amassed piles of blankets and pillows, waiting to be picked up by their owners or donated or whatever the dean wants to do with all of them. Soon they find themselves in the large dome Abed used as headquarters.

"Let's take a break," Britta says. She flops down into one of the beanbag chairs and closes her eyes. "I'm so tired. Can't we wake up Pierce and Annie and make them switch with us for a while?"

He sits in the beanbag next to her and nods his agreement. "But then we'd have to walk all the way back to the study room and I'm not sure I want to right now. It's kind of cozy in here."

She shifts her body so her feet are resting in his lap and snuggles down into the chair a little more. "Yeah, it is. I kind of understand why Troy and Abed want to live in one."

"You said it was lame last year." He wraps his hand around her ankle.

"I know. It still kind of is. For me. It works for them," she says. "Do you think they'll be okay?"

"They'll be fine. I think when we come back to school tomorrow, we'll sit in that study room and everything will be exactly the same. Although if this is how they fight, next time it happens I'm leaving town."

She laughs and watches him for a moment; his eyes are closed. "Hey, that whole friendship hat thing? That was… it was really nice."

He doesn't respond and she wonders for a moment if he's fallen asleep. She gets an idea that's probably not so good but the school is deserted and quiet and Pierce and Annie are going to be sleeping for hours and the fort is so warm and comforting. Carefully, she slides her feet off his lap. He opens one eye and watches as she gets up and moves to straddle him. His hands slide up to grip her hips and he smiles.

"To what do I owe the pleasure?"

"I'm sleep-deprived and a couple days ago I had sex with a corporation."

"Mmm, you know just what to say to a guy."

"Shut up."

She leans down and kisses him, slow and sloppy. His hands slip underneath her shirt and she shivers when he brushes against her skin.

"Are we going to fuck in a pillow fort?" he mutters after he breaks from her lips to trail his mouth down her neck. "What would Abed say?"

She gasps when he reaches her breasts, pulling her shirt over her head. "We did it in his bed and in his bathroom. This is much less offensive." She quickly undoes the buttons on his shirt and just as she's about to pull it off, his phone beeps in the breast pocket. She grabs it before he can and reads the text message from Annie. "'Where are you and Britta? Do you need me to come help?' Why is there a picture of a snowman?"

Jeff's hands are on the button of her jeans but he quickly abandons trying to get her fly open to grab the phone. "Oh, it's just like a thing." He types out a response and puts his phone back in his pocket.

They both pause for a moment, awkward. "Do we need to go?" she asks quietly.

"No, no, it's fine. I told her to go back to sleep." He starts back for her jeans and she pulls away.

"Look, I'm not going to have sex with you if you're picturing Annie the whole time. That is a hundred different versions of messed up." She maneuvers so her feet are on the ground and stands up, reaching for her shirt. This is stupid, and she wonders if she should suggest switching places with Annie so she could go have a slumber party with Pierce and Jeff and Annie could do it in Abed's pillow fort. It seems like the better option and she's about to open her mouth to say so when Jeff grabs her wrist and pulls her back down.

"Hey. Phone's off."

"Have you ever had sex with Annie?"

He leans up and kisses her. "Not even a little bit." His hands go back to her jeans and he manages to get them unbuttoned this time. "Is that Subway guy better in bed than me?"

She raises an eyebrow and smirks, thankful that he always knows how to restore the balance. "Refresh my memory."

Later, they decide they should probably buy Abed a present.

* * *

_five_

Pierce's brother Gilbert turns out to be a really nice guy. He buys the group a round of yard margs at Skeeper's and at first it's a little weird because everyone (Shirley excluded) has pretty large family issues and so they're not too comfortable with the concept. But Gilbert is the exact opposite of Pierce and soon they get him to loosen up enough to crack jokes and tell stories about his childhood.

After a few hours, Shirley, Annie, and Abed are ready to leave, so they pile into Shirley's van, taking Troy with them. Not long after, Pierce and Gilbert head out to take care of the rest of the paperwork for Pierce's inheritance, leaving Jeff and Britta elbow-deep in margaritas.

Jeff has a scowl on his face and Britta nudges him. "What's wrong? Are you mad because I'm better at video games than you are?"

"Shut up. Just because you got lucky when you punched some buttons doesn't mean you're any good at video games," he says.

She rolls her eyes and takes another gulp of margarita. "Whatever, Winger."

"Do you think it's weird that Pierce has a brother?"

Britta scoffs. "You mean a half-black brother? No way. His dad was way too racist not to have a love child with a black woman."

"That's not what I mean, dummy."

She cocks her head to the side. "Oh. Then no, not really, I guess. Why?"

Jeff takes his arms off the bar and spins on his barstool to face her. "Because _I_ could have a brother I don't know about. One day I could get a call from some guy and okay, sure, I won't have to play a super intricate video game, but there's a huge chance that I'm not my dad's only kid."

He leans on the bar again and she puts her hand over his. Her head is swimming from too much tequila but she's so determined to be a good friend right now. "You're right. But the question is, can you live without knowing? Or do you need to find out?"

"I don't know." He moves his hand and laces his fingers with hers. "I wouldn't even know where to start."

"Google," she shrugs, making him laugh.

"Hey, what's going on with you and Troy?"

She can't help but smirk at the jealous tone in his voice but her face quickly crumples with confusion. "I don't _know_. We went out to lunch and he was _so sweet_. Like, he held doors open for me and paid for my meal and pretended to be interested in what I had to say. And it was really nice."

"But?"

"He's such a _baby_. He's so naïve and nice and he still believes the world is a good place. I feel like I'm going to corrupt him," she says, downing the rest of her drink.

He laughs again. "Because you are. No offense but ten minutes with you and poor Troy will know about everything that's wrong with the world."

"You're right. He invited me over last weekend for movie night with Abed and Annie and god, the three of them are just so _young_. And they're way too in sync. They're running around acting out scenes from movies and having popcorn battles and I'm sitting on the couch with a forced smile on my face feeling like their mom."

Their hands are still intertwined and she stares at them for a moment. Troy didn't try to hold her hand. Or kiss her. And here she is at a bar, drunk with Jeff, and she knows that he's going to eventually kiss her and they're going to go outside to where his car is parked and they're going to have sex in his backseat because that's what they do.

"Does it bother you? Me and Troy?" she asks.

"Psh, what? Why would it bother me?"

"Because," she says, alcohol giving her courage she doesn't have, "it would bother me."

She holds his gaze steady and stays perfectly still because she knows it's coming, and sure enough, he leans in to kiss her. And she's right, they have sex in his car and when he's sober enough to drive they go to her place and have sex again.

In the morning she wakes up and he's already gone, a mug of coffee waiting for her on the kitchen table. She smiles to herself, ignores the ache in her chest, and goes about her day. Nothing has changed.


End file.
